The Game
The basic strategy is to buy and sell goods for profit in a multiplayer environment. Both players and non-player entities can buy and sell goods. The main areas of game play focus on: exploration, crafting, resource collection and combat.
The game itself is a simple windows forms application. But don't take that the wrong way, the game does not look like Minesweeper. It is inspired by games from the 1980's that first started using desktop style operating systems like the first Apple MacIntosh and Windows 1.0 computers for making games. Internally the game has all the standard systems including a game clock which is used to communicate with the server and other players.
The benefit of the game using windows forms is so that you can easily tab between open applications. It is possible to run as many instances of the game as you like. But built into the game is a character selection screen that can be used to spawn instances of the game for each character you create. The main benefit is that if you're computer is setup with multiple monitors, you can run an instance on each monitor and tab between instances when you run more than one on each monitor.
I am developing the game between a Win7 and Win8 computer. While I don't have touch screen, it seems like a natural fit given the way the game screens mimic mainframe panels with lots of switches. I also have been making an effort to keep the required computer specifications low. The game runs great on my computer with an older CPU and 4GB ram.
Links
Trailer
Sadly there is no trailer at the moment.
The Backstory
In an alternate dimension, in an alternate universe, on a planet nearly identical to Earth, there is a monument dedicated to an Earthling named Monk James. A small inscription scribed between the years 1971 and 2729, “Witness the man who raved at the wall.” At any given moment the monument is surrounded by a dozen or so travellers trying to figure out what it all means. Sadly, it is right in front of them; they just can’t see it.
This story neither begins nor ends here. It’s somewhere in the middle and in reality makes no difference at all. If anything the start of the story is obvious, how did this Earthling even make it to this alternate dimension? It doesn't really matter, after all you read his work and followed the carefully orchestrated steps and have gotten there yourself.
Close your eyes and imagine you are on a planet, nearly identical to Earth. Picture a grassy meadow, birds flying around, the sound of a brook, butterflies and a small gathering of hippies in front of spaceships that look almost home-made. That may be hard to imagine because once again this is from around the middle of some other story. So let’s talk about this other Nearly Earth, for brevity lets call Nearth.
As stated a couple times, Nearth is nearly identical to Earth, there’s really only one small difference, which led to a bunch of major differences. In 1967 things went radically different on Nearth. The hippies took over. The oversimplification of that statement might make it seem like a far fetched thing to happen, trouble is that it was just that simple.
The effects were drastic, one could write for hours on just a few changes that had long lasting effects. Since that sort of research should take place outside this story I’ll mention just one subtle change to illustrate the impact. Through a quorum it was decided that the US should change its national anthem. The argument was that the current anthem was nothing more than glorification of a horrific battle, which certainly involved a lot of unnecessary deaths, and instead the national anthem should be one well planted in a state of peace, grace or some hallucinogenic state. Kumbaya became the national Anthem on July 3, 1969.
But there were many changes, too many to list here. But the most significant change that spawned a series of events related to their stage started with possibly the most obvious #1 item on the hippy agenda. Recreational drugs were legalized and regular use was encouraged. This had some adverse effects on things like technology. Somewhere around 1981 things pretty much hit a standstill and have remained there for centuries.